I Said Pass the #@%*! Potatoes: Dee Wallace lets the witch show through the homey facade in HANSEL AND GRETEL.
It’s our first Spielberg veteran here at CFQi, and a good one, too. Dee Wallace probably reached her greatest audience as the progressive but put-upon suburban mom of E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, but she had previously developed her genre chops in two landmark horror titles: Wes Craven’s THE HILLS HAVE EYES and Joe Dante’s THE HOWLING, and most recently took her career in a darkly satirical direction with her work in the Asylum’s gory, fractured fairy tale, HANSEL AND GRETEL. Our conversation with Dee was frank and incisive, taking in a discussion of Spielberg’s personal investment in his films, the emotional complications of doing explicit sex scenes, and what it’s like breaking into the business on a low-budget horror film. Click on the player to hear the show.

Fear Has a New Name, and It's BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR.
It’s the rare film that comes along and totally redefines the medium, but such a film is BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR. From its striking visual style to its Oscar-worthy performances to its dazzling special effects to its powerful, environmental subtext, this tale of a small, California town enduring the wrath of a vengeful Mother Nature — in the form of merciless attacks by flocks of deadly birds — is no mere light entertainment, but a truly life-changing experience, as immersive as AVATAR, as revolutionary as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
Andrea Lipinski and Kevin Lauderdale join Cinefantastique Online’s Dan Persons in a sober, critical analysis of this landmark film, analyzing how director James Nguyen has taken the lessons learned from his spiritual mentor — Alfred Hitchcock — and exceeded the master in every regard. Click on the player to hear the podcast, and discover how the pantheon of cinema greats — from Griffith to Scorsese; from Eisenstein to Kubrick — will soon have a new name added to its ranks.

It’s time for another trip into the depths of the Black Hole – the Black Hole Ultra Lounge Podcast, that is, this time brought to you with all the excitement of D-Box motion simulation. So strap yourself in and get ready for a bumpy ride as Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski ruminate on the philosophical questions plaguing sophisticated aficionados of horror, fantasy, and science fiction cinema. To wit: How high a batting average does a genre filmmaker need to maintain in order to be considered a power hitter? Are the twin titanic terrors of of type-casting and sequels to blame for career slumps of otherwise stellar talents? Is the D-Box motion-simulator chair the only way to truly enjoy INCEPTION? Does the premise of J.J. Abrams’ SUPER-8 (kids filming a movie encounter real-life monsters) suggest a pint-sized version of George A. Romero’s DIARY OF THE DEAD?

Pssst, Courtney, David REALLY Wants to Make the Split Permanent: Courtney Cox ignores the warning signs in SCREAM 4.
Poor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). Not satisified with the ordeals she suffered in SCREAMs 1 – 3, she’s gotta go and tempt fate by returning to Woodsboro and tempting the attention of the psycho killer Ghostface, who it turns out is still kicking around and slaughtering high-schoolers with manic glee. And if the main protagonist of the SCREAM series (along with her co-stars David Arquette and Courtney Cox) hasn’t taken that old saw about not being able to go home again to heart, could it be possible that neither has director Wes Craven nor writer Kevin Williamson, who with SCREAM 4 attempt to reboot their long-nascent satirical horror franchise with an installment that pokes fun at — surprise, surprise — reboots of long-nascent horror franchises? Join Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they debate the issue.

Writer-director Wes Craven returns to the horror genre with MY SOUL TO TAKE, and the Cinefantastique Podcast is there to examine the results. Join Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski as the delve deeply into the terrors of the Riverton Ripper, whose soul may have returned in the body of one of the 7 children born on the night of the police gunned down the killer. Also, a fond farewell to director Roy Ward Baker, who helmed such cult and classic films as QUATERMAS AND THE PIT (aka 5 MILLION YEARS TO EARTH), THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, and ASYLUM.

Last year, Rogue Pictures announced the Universal Pictures would release writer-director Wes Craven’s cryptically titled thriller “25/8” some time in 2009. That plan did not come to fruition. Instead, a year later, the title has been changed to MY SOUL TO TAKE; a release date has been set for October; and a poster has appeared on eBay, suggesting that the film has undergone a post-production conversion to 3-D.
The delayed release date is not a good sign, but that could just be a matter of an over-crowded market, what with the Craven-produced remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT hitting theatres last year. However, the title change, the poster tagline (“Only one has the power to save their souls”), and the 3-D conversion suggest the film has been retooled to sell MY SOUL TO TAKE squarely as a horror film, with a possible supernatural element, rather than as a suspense-thriller, which was how the film was originally being presented in press materials. The story takes place 16 years after the death of a serial killer, who swore he would return to murder the seven children born the night he died. When people start disappearing mysteriously, the question becomes whether the psychopath been reincarnated as one of seven teens, or did he survive the night he was left for dead? The plot focuses on the killer’s son, Adam Heller (Max Thieriot), a young man unaware of his father’s crimes but plagued by nightmares. John Magaro and Emily Meade co-star.
Release date: October 8
Watch the trailer below:

Ghost Face from the Scream series
More than 10 years after the release of SCREAM 3 and following a drawn out will-they-won’t-they internet debate, Dimension Films have finally greenlit SCREAM 4 with a release set for April 15, 2011.
According to Variety Wes Craven is indeed returning as director along with series veterans Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courteney Cox Arquette. The fan favourites will also be joined by a cast of younger actors to play the requisite Ghost Face fodder. So far each film in the franchise has been directed by Craven and financially sucessful; each grossing over $160 million.
So good news all around then. The real question then is whether, after such a long period between the last instalment and having been parodied to death in films such as SCARY MOVIE, Craven can pull it off again and give fans the great SCREAM sequel they’ve been waiting for. What do you think, is he up to the challenge or has this series past its sell-by-date?

click to purchaseRemaking LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT seemed like a dubious proposition at best; the original was so much a part of its cycnical ’70s era (Nixon, Vietnam, Watergate) that transplanting it to contemporary times seemed as if it could rob the story of vital cultural context. Yet somehow the new HOUSE works better than expected, perhaps because we had come full circle to a cultural context roughly equivalent to the early ’70s (Bush, Iraq, Torturegate). Consequently, the remake seemed weirdly appropriate in the waning days of the previous administration – not an anachronisms ripped from its own time and plopped down haphazardly into a new era.
The new version of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT does not seek to replicate the grungy, semi-documentary feel of the original. It follows the basic outlines, but there are several notable variations that prevent the remake from being a clone. Some of the overt sexuality violence has been toned down, but Krug and company’s heinous assault, rape, and murder of innocent victims packs as much impact as ever, creating that rare horror film moment when the gore-hound audience, instead of shouting “Ain’t it Cool!” in approval, is shocked into dumbfounded silence. Whether it’s an improvement over the original, is hard to say, but the new HOUSE on the block stands on its own foundation.
Not everything works as well as it should. Krug’s escape from police custody is an absurd movie-moment: when his brother and his girlfriend ram the police car in which he is being escorted, Krug somehow survives without a scratch, while both officers are lethally wounded.
And in a plot point deleted from the 1972 LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, after being raped and shot, Mari Collingham (Sara Paxton) survives not only long enough to tell her parents what happened; she’s is actually well enough to recover, if her parents can get her to a hospital.* This is supposed to increase the suspense when Mari’s attackers coincidentally show up at the titular “Last House on the Left” looking for shelter in a storm, but it blurs the perfect movie logic of the original, which focused on the gruesome revenge the parents took, the events playing out like a cathartic dream of karmic payback. The resulting cat-and-mouse scenes go on longer than they should, throwing off the rhythms, so the much-awaited revenge has trouble building to a perfect climax. Consequently, the film seems almost forced to add what feels like a tacked-on gore scene in which the villainous murderer-rapist Krug (Garret Dillahunt) gets what he deserves.

DVD DETAILS

Rogue’s single-disc release of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT offers the theatrical cut and an unrated cut. Apparently this is achieved with branching technology, as both versions are on the same side of the disc, and the Menu warns that the unrated version may cause havoc with some older DVD players.
In any case, the widescreen transfer is a beauty. The soundtrack is available in English, Spanish, and French, with subtitles options for Spanish, French, and English for the hearing impaired.
The unrated cut does not differ significantly from the R-rated theatrical version, which was plenty brutal on its own terms, featuring one of the most repugnant rape scenes ever committed to celluloid. There is an additional insert close-up of Mari’s friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac) being stabbed in the belly, but the overall impact of the scenes is little changed, and you won’t see anything to match the over-the-top insanity of the 1972 film. (It is interesting that the heterosexual rape scene is acceptable in a mainstream nationwide release, but original flm’s enforced lesbianism had to be left out, along with the scene of Mari’s mother offering a blowjob to her daughter’s rapist and then biting off his penis).
Bonus features are slim, consisting of “Deleted Scenes” and “A Look Inside.”
The deleted scenes would be more accurately described as extended scenes or alternate takes. The deleted footage is mostly minor transitional stuff, but there is one over-long suspense scene showing Krug’s son Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) sneaking in to retrieve the gun that plays a role later. There is an amusing gag-reel moment: after Mari’s parents give her the keys to the family car, the stunt drive standing in for Sara Paxton hits a tree on the way out of the driveway. There is also a very impressive shot of John Collingwood’s bloody revenge on Krug; it’s the same action seen in the finished film, but presented here in a single take, wherein the distinction between live-actor and special effect is absolutely invisible.
The “Inside Look” is a promotional film – basically the trailer with added interviews from director Dennis Illiadis and producer Wes Craven, who discusses the rational behind remaking the original (which he wrote and directed). You won’t get much insider information, but you will hear Craven and Illiadis echo the 1972 advertising campaign: “Just keep telling yourself: It’s only a movie.”
*There is also a weird moment in which both parents react to the realization that Mari has been raped – as if being nearly murdered were bad enough, but sexual violation is somehow worse.
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After being abused and shot, Mari (Sarah Paxton) is attended by her parents (Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter).
I’m quite sure the new re-make of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left will immediately raise questions about whether we really needed to re-visit this violent revenge story. I was certainly never a fan of the original movie, which I found to be nearly unwatchable, mostly due to its amateurish acting and camerawork, rather than for any of the graphic violence it depicted. In fact I was rather leery about checking out the new remake. However, I finally decided to go see it and was frankly pleasantly surprised at how well the Wes Craven produced remake has turned out. It is actually quite a stylish and suspenseful little movie that has far better acting and photography than the original — which as Craven notes, was his first movie and was made for only $100,000 back in 1972. In any case, it already seems to be generating more comments here at CFQ than any film in recent memory.
Does that mean that the remake will once again tap into the zeitgeist? I think it very probably will, because as Steve notes in his brief interview with Wes Craven, conditions somewhat mirror the unsettled times of the first film. Only now they are actually far worse. The current economic crisis continues to throw millions of people out of work and, understandably, this has many people very upset and bitter. They want to know why this is happening and presumably wish to blame someone. The most obvious person to vent their rage against, whether fairly or not, is the man who has been in charge of the government for the last 8 years, George W. Bush. Through either incompetence or corruption, our “elected” leaders in Washington have through their lack of action brought America to its worst financial crisis since the great depression.
Ironically, after the stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing depression, horror cinema rose to the very pinnacle of artistic success. So while there may have been a great depression in the country, from 1929 until 1936 horror films enjoyed their golden age. Could such a renaissance be a by-product of our current economic malaise?
Who knows? In any case, this new version of The Last House on the Leftis directed by Dennis Iliadis, a talented young Greek who explains, “This film is based on a very archetypal and primal story, which is a great foundation. I wanted to keep all the shock value and the power of Wes’s film but develop the story in my own way.”
Iliadis also realized that working closely with his actors would be a key, since they would be required to do extremely violent scenes. “You must discover the characters with the actors,” says Iliadis. “We rehearsed for a month-and-a-half on my first film, Hardcore. We got to a place where we could shoot very difficult scenes very quickly, because we had developed the characters in rehearsal. All the extreme scenes came out naturally after that.”
As a result, the remake can easily be seen as a powerful statement about violence and revenge in today’s society, where just a few days ago 10 people where shot dead by a crazed psychopath in Alabama, for no apparent reason. Thus, this new remake might provide a much needed catharsis for the growing number of unemployed. Wes Craven expounded on some of these same themes when I talked to him for Cinefantastique back in 1999.These first three paragraphs are taken from the movies press notes, wheren Craven talks about making the original film with producer Sean Cunningham: Wes CravenWESCRAVEN: Last House on the Left was very much a product of its era. It was a time when all the rules were out the window, when everybody was trying to break the hold of censorship. We were all very anti-establishment at that time. The Vietnam War was going on, and the most powerful footage we saw was in actual documentary films of the war. In Last House, we set out to show violence the way we thought it really was and to show the dark underbelly of the Hollywood genre film. We consciously took all the B-movie conventions and stood them on their heads.
When Sean and I made The Last House on the Left, our attitude was that we were going to do this tiny little film, and it was only going to be shown in two or three theaters. Nobody was ever going to see it, and nobody was ever going to know we did it. So, we essentially said, “We’re going to show things that people have never seen before on a movie screen. We’ll pull out all the stops and just do whatever the hell we want.
Because the original had been produced on such a minuscule budget, there were many aspects of the story I simply couldn’t afford to explore. Fortunately, the new version has a much bigger budget, so we were able to greatly expand the production’s scope and take more time and care in shooting it.
LAWRENCE FRENCH: How do you feel about the possible danger of a brutal and violent movie (such as The Last House of the Left) inciting a copycat killer?WES CRAVEN: I could conceive that there might be a copycat killing, where a killer who is already completely nuts, might use a movie as his format or pattern for a murder, but I think that person is going to kill anyway. I think art is more important than worrying about that. If you are going to look at any single instance of something causing a death, then you’d have to eliminate 80% of the things in our society. People have been killed with pencils. We’re killed all the time by cars and airplanes, but we don’t stop using them, because they’re important, and it’s a very small percentage of deaths. The number of people getting killed by a copycat act is infinitesimally small, yet it’s been blown out of all proportion by the media. I think the reason why, is that some people are interested in stopping the message, which is that there is madness in our society, there is violence that’s out of control and unexamined. That’s why certain people hate these horror films. They want us to sweep it under the carpet, and act like everything is Disneyland, and it isn’t. It’s just like they want to control rock lyrics, or rap music. They want to act like there aren’t those passions and rages out there. Well I’m sorry, but they are there. Part of the reason they’re there, is because a lot of people are leading lives that cause a lot of other people pain and rage. The George W. Bush’s of the world like their nice lily-white world, but they live isolated away in country club enclaves.
Horror films are really primal theater. You are dealing with imaginary characters that are representing other elements. When you look at a movie that way, you can get around the very parochial idea, where people say, “‘Oh my God, you’re depicting teenagers getting slaughtered, and you’re a horrible person.” No you’re not, you’re talking about modes of being, whether some people can cope with threats, or some are oblivious to it. A lot of people ask me how I can do films that are glorifying violence. I always turn that around and say, “It’s not glorifying violence. It’s a film about normal people facing violence, and they’re horrified by it, but they learn to triumph over it.” That’s what life is about, especially as a kid. Facing your fears. I always try to look at the positive aspect. I don’t think Freddy Krueger is just a man with knives on his fingers, but it’s talking about an element that either kills innocence or stupidity. In Hindu mythology there’s Shiva, which is the goddess of death and destruction, but they’re not talking about the specific symbol as a reality. It stands for something else.
I think there’s plenty that’s done in the genre that’s at a low level, but it also has the capacity to accept a heavy load of content. It’s like the story of Cain and Abel. It gets down to those very basic and simple elements that say so much about the human beast; both the good and the bad sides. It shows the worse that human beings can do to each other, but it also shows how courageous and strong humans can be in the face of adversity. The genre lends itself to both the horrific and the heroic, in a really great way. I’m just glad that I read the Greek myths and was steeped in The Bible when I was growing up, because it’s all a very similar kind of drama.LAWRENCE FRENCH: Do you recall confronting any specific childhood fear when you were growing up?WES CRAVEN: Well, I remember growing up in very tough and dangerous neighborhoods. I came from a broken family, with a father who was a pretty scary man. I was raised in a very fundamentalist family with all that sort of hellfire and brimstone preaching. I think those kinds of things certainly affected me. I mean telling a little kid he’s going to burn in hell forever, that’s a pretty scary concept. There was a lot of talk of the Devil, spirits and all that kind of thing.
LAWRENCE FRENCH: One of the only ways children have to escape a bad situation is through dreams. So I imagine you had some vivid dreams as a child.WES CRAVEN: Yes, I always had very powerful dreams and as a kid I would be wondering, “What is that world and how do I deal with it?” So I certainly found Surrealism and Dada to be very interesting art movements. I especially liked the way directors like Luis Bunuel would go in and out of a dream state. I think as a filmmaker, it was a niche that was very interesting to me, and somewhat unexploited.LAWRENCE FRENCH: Which reminds me of something Christopher Lee told me: “We all love to dream. We all love to escape.” And weren’t you actually hoping to use Christopher Lee in a movie?WES CRAVEN: Yes, we wanted to use Christopher Lee in Swamp Thing, for the part Louis Jordan played, but he turned us down, because he didn’t want to turn into the monster at the end. He just always wanted to be himself, so that was the deal-breaker. He would have done it otherwise. It would have been fun to work with somebody so identified with genre films in Swamp Thing.LAWRENCE FRENCH: After the first two Scream movies came out, there was a series of random high-school shootings and a renewed attack on Hollywood movies that dealt in extremely graphic violence. Did that make you re-think any aspects of the violence you were depicting when you made Scream 3?WES CRAVEN: Not really. We looked at the script very carefully to begin with and asked ourselves if we thought if anyone was looking like they were making violence look cool, or anything like that. We certainly had a moment of introspection, but we felt the script was pretty clear about who the cool people were and who were the losers. We felt we were well within the boundaries of a good murder-mystery and there is nothing that is going to incite any riots in public places.LAWRENCE FRENCH: Of course, the wave of high school killings that took place were mostly done by disturbed kids who use an arsenal of guns. In real life nobody seems to get killed by big hunting knifes, which makes the Scream movies a bit more removed from everyday reality.WES CRAVEN: It’s funny, too, that in the latest incident, when this guy walked into a Baptist church in Texas and killed 6 people with a gun, there wasn’t the slightest hint of him watching horror movies or anything like that. But nobody bothered to mention that. It’s only when somebody brings that up as an excuse, you know if somebody has a house full of horror movies, that then we’re charged with causing all these things.LAWRENCE FRENCH: Since everyone is always looking for the reason why these things happen, isn’t it possible they are simply the result of mentally disturbed people with a pent-up anger and rage inside of them?WES CRAVEN: Yes, there’s always that anger and rage, and its difficult being a human being among many, many others, in a civilization with such discontent. But the fact is that this nation is also incredibly heavily armed. That has a lot to do with it and it is a time period that for certain groups of people suggests certain extreme measures and actions. People might think I’ve been slighted, so I’m going to take my vengeance. That’s something that people can fall into during these times.LAWRENCE FRENCH: Do you think stricter gun control laws would help?WES CRAVEN: That’s a tricky question, because there are a huge amount of responsible gun owners that are being unfairly pressured by all of this. But certainly a gun is a thing that can be used to cause death and I think it should be licensed and people should be given access to guns only after checking-out and passing some sort of test. We do that with cars, which also can be lethal and nobody objects to that. I think what is so bizarre about this country is that guns are so easy to get, and there’s this whole tradition of gangsters and the outlaw being cool. As a result of that, we have the whole gang culture and rap culture where every kid has a gun and they use it completely indiscriminately. They don’t seem to care if they hit anyone else, whether it’s bystanders or children. That’s a very dangerous situation, and it seems to me you’re not going to eliminate guns from this culture, but a really stringent enforcement about crime laws involving guns would make a huge difference. But nobody’s really doing much about enforcing the laws that are on the books. People tend to do things they think they can get away with. By and large people commit all sorts of crimes in our culture and get relatively light sentences. If it was made to be a felony to be caught with an unlicensed gun, and you knew you were going to do jail time, I think a lot of people would think twice about doing that. But guns are out there and people do not give up their guns. Gun owners are proud of their guns and like them. It also in a way stands for their independence. To give them up is to become vulnerable to the government taking over. There’s a lot of people who feel that to own a gun is to be empowered by the government, in a way that’s good, but that doesn’t give you right to use it against somebody who is not trying to harm you. So it seems to me, we should make the stipulation that you can own a gun, but if you use it to commit a crime, you will be put away in the slammer for a long, long time.LAWRENCE FRENCH: Nowadays, after all the horrible shootings that have taken place at schools like Columbine, Jonesboro, Springfield and Virginia Tech, I imagine many students are now much more fearful.WES CRAVEN: Yes, I don’t feel kids have that same sense of invulnerability any more. It’s really scary now, and this killing in Texas happened when people were at a Church at a prayer meeting. How much more of an invasion of a sanctuary can you get than that? And it was apparently totally arbitrary. The guy just happened to get a flyer from the church earlier in the week.LAWRENCE FRENCH: You have a Masters of Philosophy degree from John Hopkins University and early in you career you were a teacher. What subjects did you teach?WES CRAVEN: I taught humanities, which was a survey of western civilization, art and literature. I also taught freshman English, creative writing and a course in modern drama.LAWRENCE FRENCH: A lot of English teachers hope to write a novel, but usually don’t get a publisher.WES CRAVEN: That was really my initial reason for going into teaching, so I would have time to write. From junior high school on I had been writing and after college I very much wanted to be a novelist, and was doing a lot of writing on evenings and weekends. So the fact that I’ve now written a novel, Fountain Society and it’s been published has been a longtime dream of mine.